Slashdot Mirror
New Satellite Network Will Make It Impossible For a Commercial Airplane To Vanish (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm quotes a report from CBS News: For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
I think they also need to make it impossible to turn off GPS. IIRC, that's what the pilot did on flight MH370.
For one thing, the GPS satellites include error correction code, and can even be programmed to exclude certain events. They are military satellites, and we don't tell you about certain things, because it's none of your business.
But, other than flights or areas we don't want you to know about, and if they actually have functional GPS transponders, yes, you can now follow them.
If we want you to.
Fun experiment: watch how your GPS gets more inaccurate and stops working in certain areas when there are certain international incidents. You'll even see your location suddenly jump way far away.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Of course they can still vanish. Turn off the ADS-B transmitter on the aircraft and poof they're gone from the ADS-B receiver on the (Iridium) satellite.
As another poster mentioned - it's pretty hard to prevent this sort of thing while allowing the pilot to do what (s)he needs to do in an emergency situation. These aircraft are already quite automated, but to completely wrest control of the airplane from the pilot, especially at low altitude... That's not good. And it would be difficult for the computer to definitively say: Ok, the pilot is in control, or the pilot is suicidal. And even if the pilot is suicidal, what does the aircraft do then exactly?
The only way this works is if there is remote control (as in, drone tech) - and that has to be absolute perfection.
CCTV-like live video feeds from the cockpit and cabin going up to a satellite uplink at all times
You do realize that trans-oceanic planes regularly go places where there is no line-of-sight communications to civilization on the ground? Bandwidth over satellite isn't cheap, especially before this new generation of Iridium. The original Iridium didn't even have a digital mode; access devices had to have their own modem circuitry.
They're certainly not going to spend that much just because one (1) pilot (probably) went psycho and deliberately evaded tracking. There have been other cases of pilots going psycho and crashing the plane, but only one was able to hide the plane too. And if you saw some shit going down, what would you do about it anyhow?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I was involved in design of FDR/CVR systems a while ago, and I cannot recall any subsystem that could NOT be shut down. Our recorders (Sundstrand Data Control units) were to check for "zero data" and based upon other sensors assert a flag indicating whether the input died OR the pilot shut it off. This configuration was altered for each airframe, as many systems were cross-linked and you could usually figure out if a system was shut off or you had a malfunction (which would bring down other systems). I can't recall of any system that was exempted - because the FAA wanted pilots to be able to shut down ANY electrical device in case of shorts or fire.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
GPS is a receiver (unless you're the satellite). It's probably ADS-B they're talking about. This takes the GPS position as input, and transmits position information which can appear on air traffic control screens superimposed with radar.
It's possible to lie about your GPS position. This is why air traffic controllers have not stopped using radar (they know something is there whether it's squawking the right information from its ADS-B transponder or not).
It is also possible to screw up your local air traffic controller with spoofed ADS-B transmissions. Cryptographic signature is not part of the system yet.
Bruce Perens.
It's considered an act of war for a military aircraft to stop squawking its ADS-B information in another nation's airspace, without order of that nation.
Bruce Perens.
The older Iridium satellites had 3 large, flat antennae on the bottom. These would reflect sunlight down, and if viewed at the right time and place after dark or before dawn, would go from invisible to the brightest thing in the sky for a few seconds. Since the satellites were in predictable orbits and orientation, it was possible to forecast exactly when these flares would occur. I enjoyed viewing them, and surprising people by pointing them out ahead of time. I'll miss them, since the new satellites are a completely different design.
No, aeroplane manufacturers and the FAA have a problem with unexplained plane losses too. A fault or design flaw in an aircraft that, for example, manifests itself at high altitude with sudden decompression, can cause an aircraft to literally explode. Without pieces of the aircraft to analyse, this flaw could go undiagnosed for years, causing other accidents that could have been rectified much sooner.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
For some people like amateur and professional astronomers these flares have been a big nuisance. They can destroy sensitive photodetectors for instance.